CIARAN ALGAR – The Final Waltz (Fellside FECD270)

CIARAN ALGAR The Final WaltzThe Final Waltz is Ciaran Algar’s debut solo album – something to do in his gap year, allegedly – and it’s sort of what you’d expect but, then again, not really. We know Ciaran as a particularly fine multi-instrumentalist and he has added to his band another in shape of Toby Shaer with Eden Longson on drums, Giles Deacon on keyboards and Sam Kelly, who shares the vocal duties with Kitty Macfarlane. There are four songs in the set, three of them written by Ciaran but he sings only one. Quite why he decided this I can’t tell –he has a very characterful voice, albeit not as polished as Sam’s, but well suited to the material.

The songs give Ciaran a chance to stretch his arranging talents – and those of his band – away from the traditional tunes for which he is better known. All the subtlety of which he is capable comes out in ‘The Final Waltz’ and the downbeat sentiment of ‘Our Home Now’ but then we are immediately whisked away into the gaiety of a set like ‘The Luck Penny’ before ‘Until We Meet Again’ takes the mood down again.

Having set an emotional pattern on the album, Ciaran reverses it with a relatively upbeat song, ‘Locks’, followed by the desolate beauty of ‘The Wild Geese’. I like everything on this album and I’ve spent time thinking about how I would sequence it to balance the highs and lows – and of course, I couldn’t do any better. You just have to climb aboard and go with it.

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: www.ciaranalgar.co.uk

‘Our Home Now’: